vm boot slow for arch linux arm64

[Magniquick]

Description

Was just trying out the inbuilt arch linux vm config when I found it to have a slow bootup compared to the default config
digging into the logs, It hangs on things like -
>>Start HTTP Boot over IPv4InstallProtocolInterface: BA23B311-343D-11E6-9185-5820B1D65299 13D12B178
I tried enabling the coca ui for qemu and removing / changing the priority of those boot options, but it looks they do not persist across reboots.
This also doesn't work
Strangely enough, this doesn't happen with the default instance

limactl version 0.10.0
qemu: 6.2.0
OS: macOS 12.3.1 21E258 arm64

[AkihiroSuda]

Cc @mcginty

[mcginty]

Thanks for opening the issue. I'll look into the boot options and see if we can speed it up.

[Magniquick]

Here is a comparison -
limactl start default 0.01s user 0.02s system 0% cpu 23.402 total
limactl start archlinux 0.03s user 0.04s system 0% cpu 4:26.07 total
That's a slowdown of 11 times, if I am right.

[Magniquick]

@mcginty sorry for troubling you, is there any update on the issue ?

[Magniquick]

@AkihiroSuda Is there any way to modify the qemu xml files ? or pass commandline options to qemu ?

[AkihiroSuda]

@AkihiroSuda Is there any way to modify the qemu xml files ? or pass commandline options to qemu ?

You can set $QEMU_SYSTEM_AARCH64 to a custom script

[mcginty]

@Magniquick sorry, I hadn't looked at it yet. Will take a peek today.

[mcginty]

Yeah, I think the problem is that I used the "cheapest" method for booting with qemu's UEFI which is using a startup.nsh script. As I understand it, this boots into the UEFI Shell first rather than directly into linux, then the shell tries things and decides eventually to look at (for us) /boot/startup.nsh and try that out too.

[Magniquick]

Yeah, I think the problem is that I used the "cheapest" method for booting with qemu's UEFI which is using a startup.nsh script. As I understand it, this boots into the UEFI Shell first rather than directly into linux, then the shell tries things and decides eventually to look at (for us) /boot/startup.nsh and try that out too.

so you just need to copy defaults startup method ?

[Magniquick]

@mcginty Sorry for the ping, but is there any update on this ?